Dong Yuhui's fame has increased by another point.
On February 16, Dong Yuhui was awarded the Beijing Pinggu Talent Award. Pinggu Talent WeChat public account posted that Dong Yuhui's talent awards belong to the category of "Deep Cultivation and Planting Award".
After winning the award, rumors began on the Internet that Dong Yuhui also had many bonus awards, including a gift of Beijing household registration; Give away the Beijing household registration of spouse and children; Give away 1 million yuan in cash and a house, etc. In this regard, the Beijing News asked Pinggu District for verification and confirmed that the news transmitted on the Internet was untrue. Dongfang Xuan and Dong Yuhui also denied it, and Dong Yuhui posted on Weibo that he did get the honorary reward of Pinggu, but the cash and the house were rumors.
Although a series of material rewards are fake, the outside world's concerns about how Dongfang Xuan should retain Dong Yuhui is undoubtedly a little more.
"I am now paid very well and feel very satisfied with being an executive-level within the group." On the evening of February 16, Dong Yuhui denied the rumors of resignation in the live broadcast room, and confirmed that Yu Minhong's previous promise to issue one share (New Oriental Online shares) was also issued, and more than one.
In the live broadcast that night, Yu Minhong also stood up and said: if Dong Yuhui's bonus is not enough, he will give him his own.
The two sides are not enough to eliminate the possibility that Dong Yuhui wants to go further in the business competition. According to the industry standard of live streaming goods, the relationship between Dong Yuhui and Oriental Selection has actually deviated from the laws of the market. Compared with the head anchor who exclusively accounts for 20% of the commission for each live broadcast, and Luo Yonghao, who paid off 600 million debts in two years, Dong Yuhui's salary obviously has huge room for improvement.
The importance of Dong Yuhui to the selection of the East is self-evident. In Dong Yuhui's absence, the traffic and sales of the live broadcast room of Oriental Selection plummeted. During the Spring Festival holiday, from January 21 to February 7, the main number of Oriental Selection did a live broadcast without Dong Yuhui for 17 days, and the live broadcast sales were 100 million to 250 million, which was a significant gap compared with the previous average sales of 250 million to 350 million yuan per half month.
On the first day after Dong Yuhui returned to the main number of Oriental Selection, less than five minutes after the broadcast, the number of viewers skyrocketed to 100,000+, and there were even fans who sent "Phoenix Laiyi" worth 30,000 yuan.
Dong Yuhui, who originally planned to return normally after the year, did not appear in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room on time, which directly triggered concerns about the "de-Dong Yuhui" of the Oriental Selection and Dong Yuhui's departure, which was reflected in the capital market, and the stock price ushered in a big plunge after the Oriental Selection.
Since the stock price of New Oriental Online reached a high of 75.5 yuan per share on January 26, the stock price has shown a downward trend of volatility. Among them, from January 27 to February 7, the stock price fell continuously and fell by nearly 27%. After Dong Yuhui returned to Oriental Selection on February 8, New Oriental Online's stock price rose 12% for two consecutive days.
It is conceivable that if Dong Yuhui really leaves Oriental Selection, the latter's stock price is bound to suffer a heavy blow. The reference did not have Li Ziqi's blessing of the micro-thought, and was directly withdrawn by ByteDance.
Oriental Selection and Dong Yuhui, how should the two sides maintain stable cooperation on the basis of conforming to market laws? Whether it is Yu Minhong or Dong Yuhui, they may have considered this problem more than once.
A
On the evening of February 8, after taking a 12-day vacation, Dong Yuhui returned to the main account of Oriental Selection for the first time in the year after the live broadcast, and the number of viewers in the live broadcast room exceeded 100,000+ in less than five minutes after the broadcast. Feigua data shows that the total number of views of Dong Yuhui's live broadcast reached 9.09 million, the highest number of online people in the live broadcast room was 192,000, and 28,000 new fans were added.
Before Dong Yuhui arrived, the sales of the live broadcast room that night were between 5 million and 7.5 million yuan, and from 8 to 10 o'clock that night, within two hours of Dong Yuhui's live broadcast, the sales of the live broadcast room soared to 10 million to 25 million yuan, and Dong Yuhui contributed almost half of the sales of the live broadcast room that day.
Dong Yuhui's last live broadcast was on January 20, and the number of views in a single session of the Oriental Selection live broadcast room reached 10.96 million, and the highest number of online viewers reached 402,000.
During Dong Yuhui's vacation, Dong Dongfang selected live broadcasts for 17 consecutive days. Among them, on February 5, because the anchor Ming Ming and Dunton and two other anchors formed the "Oriental F4" and imitated the characters of the hit drama "Crazy" for live broadcasting, the number of viewers of this live broadcast also reached 9.33 million, and the peak number reached 96,000. The remaining sessions received less than 7 million views, the lowest number of views reached 930,000, and the highest number of views failed to exceed 100,000.
Dong Yuhui became a humanoid flow watering machine. Dong Yuhui, who did not go to the live broadcast of the main number of Oriental Selection, came to Oriental Selection from February 2 to February 3 to watch the world live broadcast with goods. Feigua data shows that in the past two days, Oriental Selection saw the world increase by 210,000 fans, from 609,000 to 818,000, and the sales on February 3 reached 1 million to 2.5 million yuan, with a cumulative number of 4.854 million views.
Regarding the question of how much Oriental Selection relies on Dong Yuhui, Haitong International Securities has made a statistic that from August to December 2022, Dong Yuhui has obvious driving effect on the number of views and GMV improvement of Oriental Selection. Taking December as an example, on Dong Yuhui's live broadcast day, its GMV increase reached 10.43 million, and the average number of viewers and the increase in fan conversion rate were also very obvious.
The drawbacks of MCN institutions' excessive reliance on a single big IP are clearly revealed in Weinian and Li Ziqi. How to avoid Dong Yuhui becoming the next "Li Ziqi" to leave, Yu Minhong should probably have planned earlier.
B
Dong Yuhui's every move has even become a barometer for Oriental Selection's stock price to some extent.
Since last year, Oriental Selection has experienced rapid development for half a year with the help of Dong Yuhui's popularity. Flush financial statistics show that in the eight months from the lowest point of HK$2.84 in May last year to January 13 this year, New Oriental Online has soared by 2,342%, more than 23 times.
However, because Dong Yuhui did not appear in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room on time after the year, the capital market has shown a downward trend since the stock price of Oriental Selection reached a high of 75.5 yuan per share on January 26, under the influence of factors such as the "de-Dong Yuhui" of Oriental Selection and Dong Yuhui's departure. Among them, from January 27 to February 7, the stock price fell continuously and fell by nearly 27%. On February 13 alone, New Oriental Online fell 15%.
The continued reduction of the holdings of the two senior executives of Oriental Selection has also added a fire to the continuous decline in stock prices. Documents submitted by New Oriental Online to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange show that Sun Dongxu, CEO of New Oriental Online, reduced his holdings twice in a row on February 7 and February 8, respectively, cashing out a total of HK $217 million. On February 9, Yin Qiang, CFO of New Oriental Online, also reduced his holdings by 1 million shares, involving HK $61.59 million.
At the specific business level, the cargo data selected by Oriental has also begun to reach the bottleneck. In June last year, with the unexpected popularity of Dong Yuhui and Oriental Selection, the number of viewers in the live broadcast room once exceeded 60 million, and the average sales per game remained at 20 million to 25 million yuan. However, after the popularity subsided, the average sales and traffic per game of Oriental Selection continued to decline. Feigua data shows that in the past month, the average sales per game of Oriental Selection have remained at 7.5 million to 10 million yuan, the average number of views per game has also dropped sharply from 10 million to 3.546 million million, and the monthly sales have fallen from 500 million to 700 million yuan to 250 million to 500 million yuan.
In order to further increase sales and let investors see the company's business potential, Oriental Selection did not choose to further strengthen Dong Yuhui's IP, but focused on the supply chain and self-operated products.
Last year, Oriental Selection cooperated with SF and JD Logistics to establish self-operated product warehouses in five cities. However, warehousing and logistics is a money-burning investment, and the Economic Observer reported according to industry estimates that a 5,000-square-meter warehouse in first-tier cities costs 50,000-150,000 yuan per month alone, not including warehouse supporting facilities, management and operator salaries. At the end of January this year, Oriental Selection invested another 17.52 million yuan for the expansion of its self-operated product factory.
The need to burn money is one thing, and the other question is whether these measures are enough to support the current HK$50 billion market value of Oriental Selection. For example, the self-media "Internet Monster Group" questioned the limitations of Oriental's selection of self-operated products and agricultural products: huge investment and no barriers to its own; There is no real capacity to be established in the selection process to reduce the price; It is more difficult to expand self-operated categories other than agricultural products; The profit margin of the self-operated model is not as good as that of the advertising model.
It is worth noting that one of the reasons why Oriental Selection has achieved relatively high profit margins is also due to the different profit sharing models between Oriental Selection and anchors. Yin Qiang, CFO of New Oriental Online, once explained the high profit margin: first, Oriental Selection did not buy traffic; Second, the Oriental selection did not give the anchors a share.
If according to the market standards of the live streaming industry, big anchors like Dong Yuhui can basically enjoy a commission ratio of 20% per game. For example, almost half of the sales of 10 million to 25 million on February 8 were contributed by Dong Yuhui, so Dong Yuhui's commission that night should be 1 million to 2.4 million yuan.
C
In order to retain Dong Yuhui and maintain the stable operation of Oriental Selection, Yu Minhong began to try to "de-Dong Yuhui" while tying Dong Yuhui's heart with equity incentives and executive-level salary increases.
Oriental Selection not only has anchors such as Dunton, YoYo, and Qiqi, who became popular at the same time as Dong Yuhui, but also incubates other new anchors in the later stage. But judging from the results, no one can replace Dong Yuhui for the time being.
The signs of "de-Dong Yuhui" are not only reflected in the cultivation of new anchors. According to the "Live Observation" report, the Oriental Selection Book Number, which once featured personal IP, removed the "Yuhui Push" label, and the image of "square-faced teacher" Dong Yuhui on the packaging of Oriental Selection's self-operated brand steak has also disappeared.
After the business becomes bigger, the hidden danger of uneven interests will be buried between personal IP and the company, and Li Ziqi is a lesson from the past.
Li Ziqi Source: Li Ziqi Weibo
Before the separation of the two sides in 2021, there was also a sweet stage of "you for Bole and I for Maxima" between Wei Nian and Li Ziqi, and with Li Ziqi's signing of Weinian, Li Ziqi's road to popularity officially kicked off. But the interest dispute between the two sides was also buried, although Li Ziqi is Weinian's biggest IP, but Li Ziqi did not get a matching remuneration, and the snail powder factory invested by Li Ziqi brand has nothing to do with Li Ziqi in terms of equity. In other words, Li Ziqi basically lost the right to speak on IP derivatives.
After Li Ziqi sued Weinian and decided to part ways with the latter, ByteDance, a shareholder who had been in Weinian for three months, also started the exit process, according to 36Kr citing a source close to the transaction, ByteDance originally invested in Weinian, mainly because it was optimistic about Li Ziqi. Now that Li Ziqi and Weinian have fallen into disagreement, ByteDance has decided to withdraw from Weinian according to the investment agreement.
How to keep Dong Yuhui and avoid him becoming the next "Li Ziqi" to run away may be something that Yu Minhong needs to carefully consider.
At the beginning of Dong Yuhui's popularity last year, there was news that the video number was coming to poach, and Yu Minhong also frankly admitted that there were indeed institutions that were digging, and if they were making great contributions to New Oriental, New Oriental could not give enough returns in profits, that is, New Oriental's was wrong, which led to Yu Minhong's commitment to Dong Yuhui to issue shares.
However, as the Oriental selection stall becomes bigger and bigger, and the dependence on Dong Yuhui increases, one day, the issue of shares will not be able to solve the problem of the distribution of interests between the two sides.
Resources:
"These outstanding talents were commended" Pinggu talents
"Send Dong Yuhui account, license plate and house? Beijing Pinggu Debunks Rumors: Fake News" Beijing News
"The play of the Oriental Selection is almost finished?" 》Internet Monster Group
"Yu Minhong can't hold the hands of executives cashing out" city boundary
"Oriental Selection "De-Dong Yuhui" is only a matter of time? 》Live observation
"Dong Yuhui responded to the rumors of resignation: did not leave, the current salary has completely exceeded his expectations" Pepper Point video
"Li Ziqi Stop More Doubtful Clouds" Hedgehog Commune